>> jon: that's our show. here it is your moment of zen. >> were you drinking alcohol yesterday? >> oh, boy he's asking me if i was captioning sponsored by comedy central captioned by media access group at wgbh [eagle caw] >> stephen: tonight, big changes for texas. their 10-gallon hats are now 38-liters. [laughter] then, can our drone program win the war on terror? yes, if you go up, up, down down, b, a, b, a, select. [laughter]

and my guest, physicist michio kaku believes an asteroid could destroy the earth. global warming, solved. [laughter] ice land is considering a ban on internet porn. now there's nothing to do in iceland. [ laughter ] this is the colbert report." captioning sponsored by comedy central ( theme song playing ) ( cheers and applause ) [cheers and applause] welcome to the report, everybody. thank you so much for joining us. [cheers and applause] [crowd chanting "stephen!"] thank you, ladies and gentlemen, please sit down. [cheers and applause]

welcome to the show, everybody. thank you for joining us. [cheers and applause] thank you, everyone in here welcome to the program. dominus vobiscum. folks, as the cardinal of cable, i'm giving you nave to narthex coverage of pope benedict's resignation in my new series "popewatch: inde-schism 2013." [cheers and applause] remembers -- remembers folks -- remember, it has been over 700 years since anyone has voluntarily depoped themselves. [laughter] well, buckle your chausable, because there are dramatic new developments. we all know that when a cardinal is elevated to the papacy, he becomes the heir of st. peter there choose a new name. so, naturally, now that benedict xvi is leaving office, he has

asked that we call him simply: benedict the xvi. [laughter] okay. okay. that's understandable. he doesn't want to have to get new towels and stuff. [laughter] but that's not all. he says he's still going to be pope emiritus and his holiness, continue to wear the white robes and live in the vatican. [laughter] folks, that means there's going to be two pontiffs. we're one pope over the line-- sweet jesus, one pope over the line. [laughter] [cheers and applause] it'll be chaos. you can't have one vatican with two popes. it's like gotham with multiple batmans. [laughter] you shine the bat signal, all these clowns show up.

[laughter] i mean -- [cheers and applause] holy sausage fest! [laughter] [cheers and applause] after all, i mean -- i mean, which one's infallible? say you're having a smoke break in the apse, and the two of them start walking towards you from different directions. you're getting double-poped-- [laughter] you know d-p'ed-- [cheers and applause] think about this -- which pope do you bow to and which one do you just go "sup?" [laughter] and imagine the confusion in the breakroom fridge when there's more than one yogurt labeled "pope." [laughter] i'm so worried. i'm so worried about this. as an observant catholic, ---6-

but, to the man's credit, he's not holding onto all the trappings of power. >> he'll trade in his famous red shoes, the prada red shoes, for a pair of hand-crafted brown loafers out of mexico. >> stephen: okay, red shoes are gone. meaning he is no longer able to transport himself to kansas. [ laughter ] and this is significant, i think he's losing the symbol of his office. >> on february 28th, they will take away his ring. the symbol of his authority and destroy it. >> stephen: so, i guess it is over and i'm worried about nothing. because there shouldn't be any problem with a really old person losing his ring of power. [laughter] he looks good.

nation, if there's one thing the reelection of barack obama proved, it's that demographic shifts are making it harder for the gop to win nationally. apparently in 2012, minority voters just didn't connect with the republican message of "stop thief!" [laughter] the man behind obama's minority outreacharound was jeremy bird, [laughter] who focused on face-to-face communication with core obama support groups, nonwhites unmarried women, and millennials. because we know how much millennials love two face-to-face communication. [laughter] well, now bird has set his sights on a new target. >> team obama's former national field director jeremy bird, one of the masterminds behind the president's reelection victory has decided his next job will be turning texas blue with a new grassroots organization battleground texas. >> you're not considered one of the battleground states. although that's gon' be changing soon.

>> stephen: yeah, that's 'gon' be changing even faster than obama's accent! [laughter] [cheers and applause] nation, this means the democrats are messing with texas! a, i believe that's unconstitutional, and b, i believe it might work. >> texas is one of four majority minority states, and its 9.5 million hispanics, currently 38% of the population. >> just 4.1 million hispanics are registered to vote, and only about half make it into the voting booth. >> stephen: which means if jeremy bird can get these minorities to the polls texas republicans may soon be saying the spanish word for "adios." [laughter] so can this jeremy bird character enact his sinister plan to win the next election

through the dirty, underhanded trick of voting? [laughter] here to tell me is the field director of obama 2012 and the founder of battleground texas jeremy bird. jeremy, thanks so much for joining us. good to see you. [cheers and applause] now, jeremy, let's talk turkey for a second. how much of this is bluster? can you really flip texas? because there's a damn good chance before the next election they will -- >> this is definitely more than bluster. if you look at the state, if you look at the demographics it's the state that is changing. the country is changing. >> stephen: what do you mean changing? >> a more diverse state. it's becoming a lot more young people. we're going to go out and expand the electorate. get the new voters, register them, bring them into the process. the folks registered to vote and not turning out in texas we're going to build a grassroots campaign and turn it into a

competitive battleground state. >> stephen: if you do that, that will upset the natural order of things. we know it's in the constitution that ohio and florida get to pick the next president. do you not believe in the constitution? >> in texas if you go there and talk to volunteers. i've seen the volunteers whether it's in el paso driving up towards new mexico or calling down they want to focus on texas. we're going to bring the fight to texas and make the a battleground state so that anybody that wants to be the commander in chief, they have to fight for texas. >> stephen: what do you mean the demographic shifts are happening? that's just liberal you've mixes for hispanics and black people d you've ms.ims deuphemisms for

hispanics and black people. if you look. [laughter] >> if you look at the state it's not just about the demographics it's the turnout. only 54% of the latinos were registered to vote and only 35% turned out. with only 50% of a population turns out to vote you get a government in texas. it for half the people and by half the people. we plan to change that it's not the demographic shift in the future it's the folks there in the future. >> stephen: you are reaching tout african-americans and hispanics? >> of course, and young people, women, across the state. >> stephen: you are a racist. >> what i want to do in texas is make the people there part of democratic process. get everybody in the state to turn out and vote so that the government reflects the people of texas. >> stephen: is voter i.d. going to stop you. rick perry behind the voter i.d. law, isn't he? >> if you look at the state the way republicans have

gerrymannedered it. >> stephen: it's an ugly word. it's extremely accurate but ugly word. >> the laws they put in place make it hard to vote. we're going to get people out to vote, fight tour their voting rights and turn them out in force. >> stephen: do you want to make a bet? $100? >> yes. >> stephen: i bet you $100 you cannot get barack obama reelected in 2016. jeremy bird,

[cheers and applause] >> stephen: welcome back, everybody. thanks. [cheers and applause] folks, over the past few years, as i've been watching the story unfold in the news, america's fleet of drones has semi-autonomously piloted its way into my heart because it works. [laughter] last week, senator lindsey graham revealed that drones have now killed 4,700 people. [cheers and applause] all right. if fans here tonight. and most impressively, many of those 4,700 people were the ones we were trying to kill. [laughter] unfortunately, not everyone is as proud of president obama's drone program as i am. for instance, president obama. [laughter] just listen to former press secretary, robert gibbs. >> when i went through the process of becoming press secretary, one of the first things they told me was you're not even to acknowledge

the drone program. you're not even to discuss that it exists. >> stephen: though, truth is, the secret got out a long time ago. i don't know how, but it was leaked to at least 4,700 people. [laughter] i just don't get why the administration is so ashamed of its extrajudicial robosassination spree. [laughter] after all, a whopping 83% of americans approve of it. even among liberal democrats 77% endorse the use of drones. and those remaining 23% of liberal holdouts are just the same spoilsports who eventually ruined the iraq war, the japanese internment camps, and the 1902 law permitting the irish to be catapulted into the sea. [ laughter ] why don't these liberal peace-humpers get how successful our drones have been? i mean, over in pakistan drone

strikes have made travel to the tribal areas so perilous for western al qaeda recruits, that terrorists are actively dissuaded from making the trip. thus cancelling this year's mtv's "spring break: waziristan." [laughter] [cheers and applause] the party lasts all year because the girls are never in school! [laughter] folks, our heroic drones have so rattled al qaeda, its leaders are distributing a 22-point tipsheet on how to avoid them. like tip number twelve "maintain complete silence of all wireless contacts." here's a pro-tip: switch to at&t. no one will ever find you! [laughter] [cheers and applause]

i love it and then there's tip number 18 encouraging militants to arrange fake gatherings using dolls and statues to mislead the enemy. a strategy previously seen only in the al qaeda training video "home al lone." [laughter] [cheers and applause] but that's not all. this tip sheet also has the key to bringing reluctant liberals on board with our drone program. number ten reads: "hide under thick trees because they are the best cover against the planes," advice that originated with bin laden himself, who wrote, "i want the brothers in the islamic maghreb to know that planting trees helps the mujahedeen and gives them cover. trees will give the mujahedeen the freedom to move around." you hear that, tree huggers?

[laughter] [cheers and applause] our drone program is encouraging reforestation. [laughter] so unless you support our deathbots you're killing the planet. remember, think locally, bomb globally. [ laughter ] we'll be right back. [cheers and applause][cheers an]

>> stephen: welcome back, everybody. my guest tonight is a theoretical physicist who's written a newsweek article entitled "asteroid apocolypse." shocking stuff-- there's still a "newsweek"! please welcome michio kaku! [cheers and applause] thank you for coming back. good to see you again. >> glad to be on it. >> stephen: everybody knows you are the author of the national best seller the physics of future. you are the professor of theoretical fizzists in new york. you awjerred the cover story on "the newsweek" let's call it magazine, will after the roves destroy the earth. okay. what are the theoretical physicists know about actual asteroids?

>> well, we look at the evidence. in 1908 we had a city that fell on sigh beera, wiped out 830 square miles of siberian real estate. >> stephen: the tungasta event. >> that's right. it could have happened last week. it scimed the earth. we dodged a bullet and then another asteroid hit russia. and if that meteor was delayed by two or three seconds, it would have been a ground burst rather than an air burst and at 40,000 miles per hour do the math it's 20 hero sheema bombs. -- her -- hiroshima bombs. >> stephen: i'm happy do you

the math. how often is this happen something in. >> we didn't have large metropolises hundreds of years ago, we had fishing vil yanlz they hit the earth before. we were oblivious, blissfully unaware that we had near misses and actual collisions with objects about the size of an apartment building. these are city buses. and then we have a nation buster which is going to come grazing past the earth and may even hit the earth. that's called the asteroid apofet. it's ten times bigger than the asteroid that scimed the earth last week. >> stephen: what do you mean may hit? what is the -- do the math. [ laughter ] what is the math on that one? >> well, first it's going to skim by the earth in 2029 and it's going to graze the atmosphere. that's the question mark. we don't know how much friction it's going to encounter. that cannot be factored

relyibly. when it grazes the atmosphere on the second pass in 2036 there's a window of opportunity where the thing could actually hit the earth even though it's still very small. >> stephen: because of the friction it encounters on 2029. >> that's right in the second pass. >> stephen: can we lubricate the earth in some way so there's not so much friction? [cheers and applause] and just duz -- [cheers and applause] >> the russians have taken this seriously. >> stephen: of course, they would. they almost got tagged. >> they said we have to maintain serious propals. maybe in 2029 -- >> steve: where do you stand in space to do the nudging?

>> first you have to land on it, put a rocket on it and the rocket will push it slightly out of the way so in the second pass it will miss the earth. >> stephen: i assume this is like bruce willis and a team of miners who get trained to be astronauts for some reason. >> president obama has stated that the next goal now that he canceled the moon and mars mission is to land on an asteroid, in which case if we land on one, it will be a dress rehearsal. blowing it up ala bruce willis there's baby asteroids coming at you. >> stephen: it turns a bullet shotgun pellets. >> yes, up want to keep it in tafnlgt we're going to be looking at it very carefully to see the structural integrity f. it's held together by graveity or a solid piece of rock that we

could push with a hydro again bomb or a rocket. >> stephen: the comet is coming by? >> perhaps the end of this year the comet of the century will come by. they are rarer than meteors. shooting stars -- >> stephen: those are meteors. >> however atomic can linger in the night sky for weeks at a time scaring the panlts off everyone and that's why everyone thinks the kings is foretold by the coming of comet and the comet of century is. cog later this year in november. >> stephen: do you know what it's called? >> no, i have to look it up on the internet. >> stephen: we can look it up right here. thank you so much for joining me. x#y.n@-x4j#66"db